Barbarians At The Gates

Brink Lindsey has an interesting start to a three-part series on how the war against terrorism is the continuation of the war between civilization and barbarism. It’s not a very politically correct observation to make, but its one that is true.

Our war isn’t against Islam per se, nor is it against the people of the Middle Eastern region, although we are at war with some of those people. It’s a war against a group that would see women treated as virtual slaves, that would execute homosexuals and dissidents, and would impose the rigors of the shari’a upon the entire world. Radical Islam is an ideology that is based upon the idea that this vision of the world must come about, no matter what the cost in blood. It is an idea that wasn’t created by the foreign policy sins of the United States or by globalization, but by a certain dangerously virulent worldview.

Political correctness says that no one should judge the culture of another group. We’re all relative to each other, and the Islamists think we’re a barbarous bunch of pagans. Yet we can no longer afford such sentiment. We’re at war with a culture that wants to kill us, and we now have to make the choice: is our culture worth fighting for?

Thousands of years of rational inquiry, scientific progress, human rights, and personal liberty are on the line in this war. These are concepts which are not free – they require the utmost defense, and unless we are willing to provide that they will be lost.